making web changes for releases easier

["James A. Treacy" <treacy@debian.org>]

Upgrading the web site for new releases needs to be made easier.
Someone had the idea to use

<: if ( -d 'frozen' ) { _:>
	stuff that only appears if frozen exists
<: } :>

The problem with this is that releases/frozen is actually a link
and only exists in the location of the html, not the wml
source. What I am proposing is the following instead

#include "$(ENGLISHDIR)/release_info"
<: if ( $frozen_release_exists ) { _:>
	stuff that only appears if frozen exists
<: } :>

The file $(ENGLISHDIR)/release_info will contain the following:
<define-tag current_release> 2.2 </define-tag>
<define-tag current_release_date> 2000-08-14 </define-tag>
<: $frozen_release_exists=1; :>

This should allow most, if not all, of the changes
needed at release time to be automated.  Additional tags,
such as the names of the current frozen, stable and unstable
releases could be included in this file if deemed necessary.

Any file which uses information in $(ENGLISHDIR)/release_info
should create a dependence on it in the Makefile so that
it will be updated automatically.

Any comments or suggestions before this is implemented?

-- 
James (Jay) Treacy
treacy@debian.org